The Taiping Rebellion: Hong Kong Society’s Observations of It during That Period
Abstract
In the mid-19thcentury, the Taiping Rebellion swept through southern China. Hong Kong, a newly established British colony, emerged as a crucial window for western powers to observe and intervene in the rebellion. This paper focuses on three key groups in Hong Kong society at the time ---British colonial officials, Western missionaries, and local Chinese ---and explores their perspectives on the Taiping Rebellion. With the deepening of academic globalization, more historical archives have been unsealed and shared, and more primary sources have appeared. This paper makes good use of this trend and draws heavily on primary historical materials, aiming to approach the historical truth of the Rebellion. Among the three groups in Hong Kong, differences in the intensity of their motivations led to variations in their observations. Disparity also existed among different observers, and the details and reasons of the perspective divergences are also revealed in the paper. This study is expected to enrich the understanding of the Taiping Rebellion from a transnational perspective and also shed light on Hong Kong’s role as a political and cultural interface during China’s modern transformation.
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